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> I mean, many others have used the same tactics with civil suits—being stripped of all of one’s money might be marginally better than being put in prison, but
by Eisenstein 3y ago
> I mean, many others have used the same tactics with civil suits—being stripped of all of one’s money might be marginally better than being put in prison, but I’d argue it’s still on the same spectrum, so it makes for a hell of a lot of leverage.
So if one thing is terrible let's use that to justify something worse?
- mananaysiempre 3y agoI’m just not convinced they are different things. Instead, what you’ve said sounds like a general argument against allowing people (and other legal entities) to bring others to court.
- Eisenstein 3y agoA prosecutor has broad powers to force a person to defend themselves in court and take a chance that they may lose -- this is incredibly coercive. You are letting a profit motivated entity hold those powers over its own contractors in order to threaten them with lengthy jail sentences unless they agree to pay back the contested money and plead guilty to a lessor crime (which then makes it impossible to ever assert you were wrongly convicted and shouldn't have to pay). To add to this, a corporation is does not have a corporeal presence that can be held to account for doing something egregious -- they just get fined and anyone involved almost always says 'I was just doing my job, a cog in the machine' and that's the end of that, whereas if a public prosecutor was extorting the community to pay them large sums of money or face an uncertain trial where they cannot access the evidence needed to prove their innocence, then that prosecutor could be put on trial themselves.